Doubt and Mental exercises of denial

[Renaissance]

The topic of doubt came up in another thread. I thought it might be fruitful to investigate this further in its own thread. It seems the law of three comes up again in how we use doubt. In one instance psychopaths have been known to manipulate their victims through the use of instilling doubt. But in another use, many have found doubt useful in finding programs through questioning the perceptions we’ve been trained to follow. Perhaps on the surface the two instances seem opposite: we get manipulated through our doubt / we begin to see less subjectively through the use of doubt. However, I think the underlying dynamic is pretty much the same, only it appears differently internally than externally - perhaps a result of the lie that a person is a united ‘individual’. Our predator or ‘internal psychopath’ suppresses our critical faculties and ‘b.s. meter’ about our perceptions of its harmful influence just as the external ones do the same. So how to create doubt that’s useful? I think the C’s gave good inspirational material here:

From session 960811

Q: (L) So, desire to serve others, and to do something because it will help others, brings realization...
A: But, realization creates anticipation.
Q: (L) Well, how do we navigate this razor? I mean, this is like walking on a razor's edge. To control your mind to not anticipate, and yet, deal with realization, and yet, still maintain hope... (J) They said it was tricky... (L) This is, this is, um...
A: Mental exercises of denial, balanced with pure faith of a non prejudicial kind.
Q: (L) OK, so, in other words, to just accept what is at the moment, appreciate it as it is at the moment, and have faith that the universe and things will happen the way they are supposed to happen, without placing any expectation on how that will be?
A: Yes.

When I first read this years ago, I couldn’t possibly imagine what ‘mental exercises of denial’ could mean and how one accomplishes such. Now, I think it is a practice where you separate yourself from the programs you’re running to see them as they are. Being so attached and identified with our programs makes the initial step of separation difficult. A strong yearning for sincerity to see the truth helps to overcome the barrier of influence of the internal psychopath. Once we’re open to seeing such an ugly part of ourselves we can question the true nature of our reactions and programs.

In Mouravieff’s book two of his Gnosis series, he includes a chapter of the various deformations of the personality. One of the interesting things in the diagrams he presents is in how many cases show the lack of development in the negative half of the negative portion of the intellectual center. ‘Negative’ in this sense doens’t mean harmful, but the normal function of critical thought and questioning. Even if it is developed though, by itself it seems not enough. One also needs a proper development of the emotional center for developing sincerity and our b.s. detector among other reasons. Or so I think. :)

 

[Marie]

In one instance psychopaths have been known to manipulate their victims through the use of instilling doubt.

Make that two - actually I think it may be a rather common tactic.

But in another use, many have found doubt useful in finding programs through questioning the perceptions we’ve been trained to follow. Perhaps on the surface the two instances seem opposite: we get manipulated through our doubt / we begin to see less subjectively through the use of doubt.

See I was discussing this with my boyfriend a few days ago. What came out of the discussion was that the doubt has to go somewhere, it had to be checked/ tested/ verified. A doubt is basically a question, and the best thing to do is to verify that question and answer it in the most accurate way possible.

What happens to me sometimes is that I get doubts like tape loops, like a question that just keeps being repeated ad nauseam. In my own limited experience that's usually a program, often aimed precisely at keeping me from acting, though of course it can also be a very pressing or important question that some part of one's mind wants one to examine.

Of course I assume you have a salt shaker handy. :)

 

[ark]

In one instance psychopaths have been known to manipulate their victims through the use of instilling doubt.

Make that two - actually I think it may be a rather common tactic.

There is an easy but powerful remedy. Namely to doubt everything, in particular to put in doubt your own doubts and to doubt those who try to instill doubts in you.

Then, we doubt everything, you just assign levels to your doubts, and you do it consciously, taking into account all that you know. Then, every time you learn more, you re-label all your doubts. Programmers call it: "update my tables." :)

 

[atreides]

YEP. We can kinda call this the CRUD of life, Create, Read, Update and Delete.

Whenever you encounter information, you create a row to hold it, when more info comes in you read it, update it, when it proves false, you delete it.

There is also another great idea, going along the lines of programming called Tainted Data. For instance, in CGI scripts, any information that passes through or by a user is considered tainted by virtue of it's mere existance and is treated in a certain way. To illustrate this, a man once found a serious flaw that still exists on windows boxes that allows people to get programs to execute arbitrary code via windows messaging, regardless of the user's priveleges. That's because windows programs that run, even those running as local with admin privileges, don't consider information from other programs as tainted, even though those programs directly interface with the user.

There is an old martial arts training method, supposedly used by the ninja, called the game of stones that is meant to a teach a person to observe every detail of what they see, and to never trust second hand information. For instance, the teacher puts as many different colored stones and various small objects into a very ornate box and tells the student he has as much time as he would like to inspect it, he does, then the box is removed and the student is asked to describe the contents of the box, what colors and in what numbers. The student will of course hardly be able to accurately name all the contents, their colors, and their size and number. The teacher then corrects him, choosing the most numerous of stones, giving the student a number incorrect by 1 or 2 and instructs him to do it again.

In the next round, the master asks for the same information, this time it will be more detailed, but the master listens to see if the student has discovered the error in the count, if he has not, then he is to be told never to accept second hand information, he must verify it himself. Finally, the master asks the student to describe the outside of the box. He will be incapable of this, beyond perhaps that it is wood or black, but even this will be difficult, at this point the student needs to have explained that he should never miss the forest for the trees, and that he should not be so occupied by the details that he misses the larger picture.

I read the story in a rather questionable book, but I liked the idea so much that I have kept it around, whether or not it was really used by the ninja is one of those types of information that falls into the impossible to know categories. I cannot go back in time and verify with my eyes that they used it, so I just take it as tainted yet still useful.

This post brought to you by Carl's Jr.

 

[Joe]

From session 960811

Q: (L) So, desire to serve others, and to do something because it will help others, brings realization...
A: But, realization creates anticipation.
Q: (L) Well, how do we navigate this razor? I mean, this is like walking on a razor's edge. To control your mind to not anticipate, and yet, deal with realization, and yet, still maintain hope... (J) They said it was tricky... (L) This is, this is, um...
A: Mental exercises of denial, balanced with pure faith of a non prejudicial kind.
Q: (L) OK, so, in other words, to just accept what is at the moment, appreciate it as it is at the moment, and have faith that the universe and things will happen the way they are supposed to happen, without placing any expectation on how that will be?
A: Yes.

When I first read this years ago, I couldn’t possibly imagine what ‘mental exercises of denial’ could mean and how one accomplishes such. Now, I think it is a practice where you separate yourself from the programs you’re running to see them as they are. Being so attached and identified with our programs makes the initial step of separation difficult. A strong yearning for sincerity to see the truth helps to overcome the barrier of influence of the internal psychopath. Once we’re open to seeing such an ugly part of ourselves we can question the true nature of our reactions and programs.

I took "mental exercises of denial" literally, and decided that it meant simply denying oneself certain little (or big) 'vices'. In this way the will can be strengthened. Of course, the important point is not necessarily having will but in what direction it is used. Some people have really strong will power to be a complete ass.

Joe

Joe